Top 5 Accounting Challenges and How Small Businesses Overcome Them

As the language and integral part of business, accounting plays a critical role in the success of every business operation. It allows you to keep track of your income, assets, liabilities, and expenditures and at the same time helps ensure statutory compliance. Accounting also helps you make important business decisions by providing you with quantitative financial information.

A business may fail due to the absence of a proper accounting system. The problem is, many small to medium business owners do not have a solid accounting background or accounting degrees. And given the fact that accounting can be quite tricky and confusing, even basic tasks can become a major challenge if operators don’t have formal or proper training.

Let us take a look at the most common accounting challenges that businesses experience and how they are able to overcome them.

Payroll Accounting

For large businesses, payroll services and preparations are handled by either the HR or finance department. But for many small to medium enterprises and startups, payroll is often taken care of solely by the accounting department.

Managing payroll entails more than just entering data on spreadsheets and computing each employee’s compensation. It is an error-prone and time-consuming task that requires you to keep track of the changes in the employment law and regulations. It also entails data management and reporting, record keeping, handling payroll taxes, and payroll cost management, to name a few.

One of the effective solutions businesses consider is payroll outsourcing. By using payroll outsourcing services, most (if not all) of the aspects related to payroll accounting are handled by a third-party contractor. This allows businesses to focus on other important matters in their daily operations.

Accuracy of matching revenues and expenses

If you are using accrual accounting as many businesses do, you have to adhere to the matching principle. This principle suggests that the expenses incurred and the associated revenues generated should be reported in the same period.

Matching revenues and expenses accurately can be quite challenging especially if it involves a large number of entries such as service contracts or sales.

One way to overcome this challenge is to establish an accounting system and prepare a written policy regarding the calculation of allocation and linking or matching expenses and revenues. This way, you can avoid confusion and ensure the consistency and accuracy of your entries. You may also hire an independent labor contractor or accounting agency to help you create and maintain an accounting system and written policy.

Managing, keeping, and organizing receipts

Tax-related records like receipts should be kept and organized. The problem is, receipts can quickly pile up and before you know it, you already have thousands of them on your file. Without a proper system in place, it would be challenging for you to manage and organize these receipts.

The best solution for this is to sort out receipts and other related records as they arrive according to different categories like type or date. With proper categorization, it would be easier for you to keep and organize your record. For paper-based receipts, it also helps if you have them scanned and stored in organized electronic files. You may also consider saving them in the cloud and keeping a backup file. Some companies partner with a manpower supplier that can provide them with the right talent for this position.

 

Payroll Service

Top Reasons Why Your Business Needs to Outsource Payroll Services

Small or big, every organization needs employees to grow in this highly competitive business world. Since employees are considered as the primary asset of any company, it is necessary to take care of things to reward, compensate, and retain them. Errors, due to miscalculation, can de-motivate employees and take a business downhill. Therefore, payroll is an integral component of every business.

Taking care of a company’s payroll consumes a significant amount of effort. Let’s face it; no organization would want to spend too much time focusing on non-core activities, such as accounting and payroll services. To alleviate that stress and focus on core competencies, a growing number of entrepreneurs are outsourcing the area of work. It is among the surefire ways to let the experts handle the complexities of systems and ensure compliance with different legislations. Outlined below are the reasons why your business needs to outsource payroll services.

Substantial Saving

Finance is the backbone of every organization as it keeps the business moving. In today’s highly competitive business world, business owners are trying hard to stretch their dollars as far as they can. At first, handling payroll in-house may seem a great idea because outsourcing work requires spending some amount of money every month.

However, the process of payroll – deductions, working hours, sick leaves, paid time off, distribution of paychecks, and payroll reports consume a considerable amount of time. You will witness a huge deal of cost savings when assigning those tasks to service providers.

Confidentiality

Often, the most underrated thing is the confidentiality of the payroll. Divulge of payroll details can lead to severe repercussions. For instance, dedicated employees are highly likely to leave an organization when they find out that less skilled office colleagues are getting more paychecks.

Besides, giving increments can be difficult for management because of the leakage of information. Confidentiality of the payroll becomes whimsically essential, especially at the senior level. Outsourcing the payroll function puts entrepreneurs’ minds at ease because of high secrecy.

Outperform the Competition

Entrepreneurs always look for ways to operate their businesses effectively and efficiently. To stand out, it is imperative to make the right decisions at the right time. Outsourcing payroll is a simpler and convenient method to make optimal use of resources.

For every business, the payroll process is an on-going operation. A significant number of efforts and time are required each month to get the payroll right. An accountant has to take care of accounts receivable & payable, and payroll tasks can be intimidating. In such a case, the outsourced service provider takes the responsibility of preparing the payroll, arranging for the payment, and passing the accounting entries.

Saves a Great Amount Time

Those who quoted, ‘time is money,’ were perhaps aware of the fact that evaluating working capital, expenditure, and profit is indeed the foolproof way to monitor the progress. The major challenge involved in In-house payroll is the amount of time it consumes.

Those handling the payroll in-house know that a meticulous approach, along with sufficient time, is required. The demand for time increases due to the addition of staff in an organization. With payroll outsourcing services, businesses immediately free up all the time consumed in the payroll process. Besides, it helps a business to expand its horizon in this highly competitive business environment.

Final Notes

Running a business is full of roller coaster ride where highs rewarding and lows are challenging. Sustaining business operations require keeping a close watch on the competition along with rules, guidelines, and several laws. Outsourcing payroll services is a great way to streamline the core business operations of your business.

 

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